Seriously though: What the bleep?
I finally finished watching What the [Bleep] Do We Know? which is a bizarre little movie.
It’s a documentary, but half of it consists of Marlee Matlin as a manic-depressive photographer. Her unhappy life is occasionally interrupted by philosophers commenting about what the universe consists of and how that affects us. A lot of their statements sound like profundity. Only a lot of the things they say are self-negating statements—like, “I don’t know how to define God, but I have a real sense that he exists.” (So how do you know if you can't define him?) Or, “There is no good and bad; there’s only things that cause us to evolve and things that don’t.” (Which implies evolution is good… yet there’s no such thing as good?)
The philosophers begin with quantum physics. (Many of them claim to actually be quantum physicists.) They are rather fascinated by it, and what it means when we look at how it affects the structure of the universe. Except—and here's their biggest problem—the universe we live in doesn’t work that way.
Our universe is made of matter, and physics analyzes the way that matter interacts. When we deal with things other than matter—namely the quantum particles, i.e. quanta, which matter is made of—we’re no longer dealing with matter. We’re dealing with quanta. Quanta doesn’t follow the same rules as matter, because it’s not matter. So we have a new, largely theoretical science—quantum physics—that studies the way quanta behaves and interacts. And while that’s neat (and a little bizarre) we don't live in a quantum universe. We live in a physical one.
No, it actually doesn’t matter that matter is made of quanta. The only quanta we ever have to deal with is light, electrons, and the neutrinos which harmlessly pass right through us. (And in the physical universe, these particular quanta function predictably by the rules of regular physics). To say that our experiences are based on quantum mechanics is like saying that human behavior is dictated by the proteins produced by our cells.
Which, amusingly, the movie then attempts to prove.
Their conclusions are that we create our own universe based on our personal perceptions of reality. But they don’t mean it in a subjective way, like I do; they mean it in an objective way. Things might literally cease to exist—not just cease to exist from my perspective—when we stop looking at them. Why? Because it’s how quantum physics supposedly works.
It’s a lot like saying that white blood cells kill bacteria… so this is why humans commit murder.
In the end, Matlin’s character chooses to love herself… and chuck her meds. (Apparently she hit the manic part of her manic-depressive cycle, when most bipolar people choose go off their medication because they figure they’re “happy,” and therefore “cured.”)
And in the end, the talking heads’ names are given—and their actual credentials. One of ’em happens to be a 35,000-year-old spirit from Atlantis channeled by a medium. And they’re not talking about their field of expertise. They’re just manipulating the data to fit their theology. Christians (like “creation scientists”) pull this crap all the time. The only difference between one and the other is that this movie is produced by New Agers.
What the bleep do they know? They admit they don’t know very much at all. But that won’t stop them from coming to conclusions, given with absolute certainty, about how we should therefore live our lives.